The confirmations follow Egypt's announcement on Saturday that it had confirmed its first case of MERS in a man who had recently returned to the country from Riyadh, where he was working.

Saudi Arabia has now had 339 confirmed cases of MERS, of which 102 have been fatal. MERS was discovered in Saudi Arabia about two years ago, the country most affected by the virus.

Among the fatal cases were four medical staff at a single hospital in Tabuk in the north-west, two doctors - one Egyptian and one Syrian - and two Philippine nurses.

Panic over the spread of the virus among medical staff in the western city of Jeddah led to the temporary closure of a main hospital's emergency room. At least four doctors at Jeddah's King Fahd Hospital resigned earlier this month after refusing to treat MERS patients for fear of infection.

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The 143 cases announced since the start of April represent a 73 per cent jump in total infections in Saudi Arabia this month.

The new cases were announced in two statements published on the Health Ministry website on Saturday and Sunday.

The 10 confirmed on Saturday included seven in Jeddah, the focal point for the recent outbreak, two in the capital Riyadh and another in Mecca. Two MERS patients died. The 16 further cases confirmed on Sunday included two in Riyadh, eight in Jeddah and another six in the northern city of Tabuk. Eight MERS sufferers died on Sunday.

Acting Health Minister Adel Fakieh said on Saturday he had designated three hospitals in Riyadh, Jeddah and Dammam on the Gulf coast as specialist centres for MERS treatment. The three hospitals can accommodate 146 patients in intensive care, he said.

Many Saudis have voiced concerns on social media about government handling of the outbreak.

In Jeddah, some people are wearing face masks and avoiding public gatherings, while pharmacies say sales of hand sanitisers and other hygiene products are soaring.

Experts are still struggling to understand MERS, for which there is no known vaccine. It is considered a deadlier but less-transmissible cousin of the SARS virus which erupted in Asia in 2003 and infected 8273 people, 9 per cent of whom died.